There is an article under www.marssociety.de interesting regarding more than one other thread where ESA, EU and countries that are members of one of the both but not of the other have been discuseed or just mentioned.

According to the article the EU and France have suggested/proposed to let all future missions that all EU-members have an advantage of be financed and administered by the EU directly. This would require an additional governmental structure besides ESA.

The article also says that Germany is against the idea - but both positions are stressed and considered.

What about it? Should I list more details? It might be usefull also to copy parts of posts of other threads here.